‘Above all other people, you ought to feel most sympathy for us; but if I mistake not, the measure of our emancipation meets with more virulent opposition in Scotland than in any other place. I repeat it again, that our creeds do not cause the deadly hatred which exists between the Catholic and Protestant in Ireland. See how peaceably they live together in England and Scotland, where they do not feel the irritation which excites us here. Nothing will ever restore our unhappy country to a state of quiet, but removing the disgraceful bonds with which we are weighed down to the earth. An enthusiasm pervades the country to emancipate the West Indian negroes; let them first remove the taint from their own constitution, let them eradicate the plague-spot from themselves, and then, with a clear conscience, they may go on and prosper; until then, their exertions in that cause will appear hypocritical and absurd—But I am talking to you as if you were interested in the matter. I forget that soldiers have nothing to do with politics, and far less soldiers who are here to keep the peace among the wild Irish.’ The conflicting statements here given may serve to give a tolerably correct idea of the state of party feeling in Ireland; at present I refrain from making any observations of my own on the subject. CHAPTER III. ARREARS. When we had been a few weeks in Wexford, we received about six months’ pay, of which we had fallen in arrear while in the Peninsula, amounting to a considerable sum each man; and as it could scarcely be spent by individuals like us, who had been exiled from home and all its enjoyments for a number of years, without some spreeing, the commanding-officer wisely resolved to relax the reins of discipline a little. In such cases I have always found that severe restraint creates the evil that it is meant to prevent; but when humoured in some degree, the ebullition passes over,—foolishly enough certainly, but in general harmlessly. Nothing is more natural than that men’s judgment should be carried away by their animal spirits on such occasions, and those who purse up their mouths and treat the matter as a crime, know nothing at all about it.